Contagion Option

Before they could come down the steps far enough to see the Executioner, he cut loose with the FN submachine gun, catching them at groin level. Bullets plowed through soft tissue, severing arteries in their violent passage, while others hammered into heavy pelvic bone. The two defenders screamed and toppled down the steps, their bodies landing in a tangle. Bolan milked off two more shots, one into each head, then raced forward, vaulting the corpses.

He was halfway up the stairs when someone slammed into his back and drove him against the hard metal steps. The Executioner struggled to shake the Korean off his back as tightly knotted fists pummeled his neck and sides. Only Bolan’s battle-hardened musculature and his combat harness blunted the bone-breaking force of his attacker’s punches. That gave him a moment to jerk himself upright and flip the unsecured sailor off his back.

The Korean toppled to the deck and clawed for the handgun in his holster. Bolan, still stunned by the sudden and savage attack, lurched up the steps and flipped over the top stair. As his body disappeared behind the upper deck, a bullet sliced the air, barely missing him. The sailor cursed at him in his native language, but the Executioner used the duration of his tirade to recover his wits and get his second wind. The P-90 had been torn away by the Korean’s sudden attack, so he reached for his .44 Magnum pistol.

Bolan saw a gun frame pop up out of the stairwell, and he kicked his way through a hatch to the next compartment before he was sliced apart by his own weapon. High-powered bullets clanged on metal, one slicing across his shoulder. It was a shallow scratch, but it reminded the soldier that his enemy was to be taken seriously. He flicked off the Desert Eagle’s safety and braced himself. The Korean sailor appeared at the top of the steps, P-90 in one fist, the handgun in the other.

Bolan tripped the mighty Magnum pistol’s trigger and a .44-caliber slug cored through the defender’s chest. The Korean collapsed to his knees, vomiting blood. Glassy eyes looked in disbelief at the Executioner, and sticky red lips tried to form words. Bolan punched another slug through the round, pale face, and then stepped forward to retrieve his submachine gun. He cut back through the bridge and located the captain’s cabin.

It was a mess, and he found torn maps in the trash receptacle. A box of matches sat on the desk, several matchsticks lying broken where the captain failed to light them. Presumably the captain was one of the last of the defenders that Bolan had encountered. He looked at the personal computer on the captain’s desk, and saw that it was in the process of deleting its files. Bolan shut off the computer, then pulled out his combat knife to open its main casing.

The hard drive sat like a silver brick in the center of the motherboard, and Bolan cut its IDE cables and wrenched it off the silicone-and-plastic board. The drive itself was as solid and strong as steel, so he stuffed it in an empty magazine pouch on his harness. Though the captain had been deleting all of its files, Stony Man Farm had data recovery software that could bring back any information that had been erased. It wouldn’t be difficult, and it would give Bolan a better understanding of why the Koreans were smuggling human beings and cattle into their country.

“Sarge?” Grimaldi asked over the radio.

“Still here,” Bolan answered.

“It got quiet,” the pilot explained.

Bolan looked at his watch. “I’ve got eight minutes before the carrier arrives. Lower the crane and I’ll be topside.”

“Gotcha.”

“We’ll head back to our airfield and process what’s on this hard drive,” Bolan told him. “Looks like I uncovered a lot more than people smuggling.”

“A black market submarine and cattle? I don’t doubt it,” the pilot quipped. “’Round and ’round we go, where we stop, nobody knows.”

Bolan left the captain’s quarters, wary for remaining defenders. But even as he did, he knew that Grimaldi was right. What started as a simple smuggling intervention had just turned into the potential for a nightmare.

Business as usual for the Executioner.

CHAPTER FOUR

Salt Lake City, Utah

Kirby Graham handed Rachel Marrick a cup of coffee as they waited at the perimeter of the bank standoff. Rachel took a sip and looked at Stan Reader, who was riffling through his luggage.

“So, who’s he?” Marrick asked.

“A friend from college,” Graham replied. “Actually, best buddies. We even went into the service at the same time. We worked together a few times there.”

Marrick smiled. “So why did he want to come to a bank robbery on his vacation?”

Graham handed her Reader’s temporary badge. “He’s a contracted asset to the FBI.”

“Contracted asset? Like a consultant?” Marrick asked.

“Yeah,” Graham stated. “Technical adviser on cases involving high technology. He used to be an engineer on a nuclear submarine. When he got out, he had a position as a professor of nuclear physics, but that got way too boring for him. He applied for a private investigator’s license and signed on as a civilian contractor for several federal agencies.”

“Private eye?” Marrick mused. “Still sounds kind of nerdy.”

“Well, he uses a lot of big words when little ones will do, but only around people who understand that kind of stuff,” Graham explained.

“I noticed that he’s packing, too,” Marrick mentioned, seeing the butt of a revolver poking out from under Reader’s jacket. “I hope he knows how to shoot.”

“Part of the U.S. Navy Marksmanship team for a year,” Graham replied. “And he’s taken courses at Gunsite, Thunder Ranch and the Lethal Force Institute.”

Marrick raised an eyebrow. “Impressive. So, why is he hanging out with us?”

“He’s scouting for people to work in his new company,” Graham answered. “He needs field assistants.”

Marrick nodded. “Assistants.”

“As in, he’s looking to hire you, too.”

Marrick shrugged. “You told him about the federal pension plan, right?”

Graham smiled. “You’d be surprised what Stretch has put aside for his retirement.”

Marrick looked at the lean scientist. “If he can make it worth giving up a federal pension, then why the hell aren’t we on the plane out of here with him?”

“He’s checking out the Dugway incidents,” Graham responded. “Because he knows I’m not going to let that case lay down and die.”

“He’s gonna put up with your stubborn ass until this is finished?” Marrick asked.

“He’s used to it,” Graham replied.

Reader returned with a small object that looked like a digital camcorder. “All right, this might help.”

Marrick looked at the device as Reader handed it to her. “What is it?”

“Take a look at the bank,” the scientist told her.

Marrick held up the device and blinked a couple of times as she saw the world cast in green. Walls and the ground appeared as misty, indistinct shapes, while people resembled yellow and red columns of flame. “Infrared?”

“I’ve miniaturized the components of the device. Take a look through that squad car,” Reader directed her.

Marrick turned to look at the trio of cops on the other side of the vehicle before putting the infrared imager to her eyes. The car disappeared into the same translucent, smoky outline on the green screen, and she was looking at the cops. She could see their guns as distinct outlines, breaking up their red and yellow images. She lowered the transmitter and looked back at Reader.

“I modulated it so that you could see concealed weaponry on their persons,” Reader answered. “The resolution’s not good enough to make out what brand, but you can make a general outline guess.”

Marrick nodded in approval. “You put this together?”

Reader shrugged. “I looked into others’ research and modified it for better portability. Relatively.”

Marrick handed Reader back the infrared scope. “Yeah. It feels like it weighs ten pounds.”

“Nine point six, without the power supply cables and belt battery,” Reader informed her. “Could be useful in a squad car trunk once I get it to the point where it can be cheaply mass produced.”

“How much did you put into it, Stretch?” Graham asked.

“Three million or so,” Reader replied, blushing sheepishly.

“For an advanced mathematician, you suck as an accountant,” Graham muttered.

Reader chuckled and adjusted his infrared scope. He turned it toward the bank and zoomed in on the upper floors. “Two snipers up there.”

“We figured three,” Marrick responded. “We should report this to Special Agent Lieber.”

Reader lowered the camera and swept the lobby. “Four men with assault rifles in the main lobby, and looks like about twenty hostages. Kirby, you know rifles better than I do.”

The Fed took the camera from his friend and looked at the lobby. “Kalashnikov design, basically. You’re right, though. The resolution sucks on these.”

“Magazines look off,” Reader stated.

Graham focused the lens, frowning. “Yeah. AK-47s have deeply curved magazines, but these are straighter, like AK-74s, or a similar 5.45 mm design.”

“You said that the Korean street gangs are utilizing top-of-the-line Soviet equipment?” Reader asked, accepting the scope from Graham.

“That’s what I figured. Here…I have samples of some of the bullets they took out of a wounded cop,” Marrick replied.

Reader handed off his scope and pulled out a pair of glasses with multiple lenses hinged against them. “Is the officer all right?”

“Yeah. He’ll be in surgery to repair the damage to his leg, but he won’t lose the limb,” Marrick responded.

“Presumably because the bullet’s velocity was lessened by intervening surfaces,” Reader replied. “Looking at the scratches on this bullet’s jacket, it had gone through something heavy and ferrous, not the sheet metal of a car door.”

Graham took the glasses from Reader and looked at the bullets in the plastic bag. “Show off.”

“High-velocity 5.45 mm armor-piercing ammunition,” Reader mentioned.

“Yeah, I see the tungsten cores. Since when do street gangs need that kind of firepower?” Graham asked.

“Tungsten cores?” Marrick asked. “I thought you needed Teflon to make an armor-piercing bullet.”

“Teflon on a tungsten-core bullet keeps it from chewing up the guns shooting it. Other than that, the really dangerous material is the heavy tungsten core, which is harder than any other metal,” Graham stated.

Marrick nodded. “So they were Teflon-coated?”

“At least on the tip before they were scoured clean by interaction with the engine block,” Reader responded. “Interestingly, though, the Commonwealth of Independent States don’t use that type of ammunition.”

“Why not?” Marrick asked. “Isn’t it the best?”

Reader took a deep breath. “The former Soviet Union doesn’t have the money to make large amounts of ammunition out of tungsten, both for the base resource metals, which are highly expensive, and the machine tooling necessary to form the bullets. It’s cheaper to use standard steel cores, even though they have a smaller penetration coefficient.”

Marrick nodded. “Who does make a lot of tungsten-core ammo?”

“This is customized ammunition,” Reader responded. “There are several smaller firms that deal with individual, specialized military units. I could narrow it down with about a half-hour’s search to see who makes 5.45 mm ammunition, but off the top of my head, I’d have to say we’re talking Eastern European production.”

“So, black market, which is Russian mafiya, but not Russian military,” Marrick concluded.

Reader scanned the building again with his scope. He looked at the upper floors and stepped past the perimeter.

“Stretch!” Graham growled, pulling his friend back.

“The snipers aren’t up there,” Reader replied. “Something’s going on.”

He lowered the lens to look at the lobby, his jaw clenching. “Kirby.”

Graham looked at the cops on the perimeter who had been paying attention to them. “What’s in the lobby?”

“The gunmen are backing out,” Reader answered. “But, you said the whole building’s cordoned off.”

“Right. The alley has a tactical team at either end. They got in there under ballistic shield cover,” Graham replied. He reached under his jacket, pulled out a Colt .45 and snicked off the safety. “Stretch, we don’t have permission to move in.”

“Damn, it can’t see through the street,” Reader said. “The Koreans are disappearing downstairs, into the basement.”

The scientist unplugged his scanner and set it on the ground. He quickly shrugged out of his battery pack and let it clunk to the asphalt, then ran toward the bank doors. Police ran out to intercept Reader, but Graham’s FBI blazer and his outstretched hand held them up.

Reader reached under his sweatshirt and drew a revolver, taking one side of the bank entrance.

Special Agent in Charge Lieber rushed forward, bellowing for Graham to hold his ground as Salt Lake police officers stacked behind him and Reader.

“Graham! Stop!” Lieber shouted.

Graham looked at Reader. “If we get into a firefight in the lobby…”

“We won’t,” Reader answered.

“So why do you have your gun out?” Graham asked.

“We might get into it in the sewers,” Reader replied. “Or wherever they came out.”

“Sewers?” Graham asked.

Reader kicked the lobby door, and with the violent opening, screams from hostages filled the air. “Everyone stay on the floor!”

“Police!” Graham echoed, following on his friend’s heels. Police officers swarmed into the lobby, spreading out and looking for hostile enemies.

“Graham!” Lieber’s voice followed.

Reader didn’t stop as he crossed over the prone figures of frightened hostages. Graham followed closely after and they reached a door marked Employees Only.

“Let me take the point, Stretch,” Graham replied. “I’ve got my armor, you—”

Reader lifted his own sweatshirt, displaying a shiny blue ballistic nylon shell covering his stomach. “It’s a new design I’ve been working on. Will yours stop 5.56 mm?”

Graham grinned. “Yeah, it will.”

He kicked the door open and charged through. Off to one side, a stairwell stood open and he took two long strides toward it before stopping short, teetering. Reader grabbed the back of his armor and tugged him back before he fell forward.

“Trip wire,” Graham warned.

Reader hopped over it and knelt by the device. “Crude. A grenade in a tin can.”

He snicked out his knife and snipped the fine string. “You got a paper clip?”

Graham handed it to him and Reader fed the metal wire into the hinge. The scientist took it out and pocketed the minibomb. “Okay, it’s safe, Kirby. Call the others in.”

Graham turned and bellowed through the door, “They went this way!”

Reader chuckled. “Who needs bullhorns with you around?”

Graham grinned and followed his friend down the stairs. The two men were cautious for any more trip wires, but the gang had to have anticipated one booby trap would slow down any pursuit.

They hit the basement running, their boots slapping concrete. The Salt Lake SWAT team was still clomping down the steps as Reader and Graham continued. When they turned a corner in the basement hallway, they saw a gaping hole in the foundation wall.

Graham’s sharp eyes noticed the demolition charges ringing the entrance and he grabbed Reader like a rag doll. The big ex-football player hurled them both back behind the cover of the intersection as the shock wave cracked down the hallway, hurling stones at bullet-like velocities.

“Thanks, Kirby,” Reader said, his head ringing.

Marrick was among the SWAT cops who finally showed up. “What the hell happened?”

“They cut us off,” Graham snapped.

“Must have used low-velocity explosives to cut that entrance hole. That’s how they got the whole gang in here,” Reader added. “Then when it was time to—”

“We have to get out of here, sir,” a SWAT officer interjected. “The building’s foundation has been compromised.”

Reader shut up and joined the exodus from the bank. As they reached the lobby, they saw that the hostages were already being moved out, but broken glass rained outside the windows. The large panes looking out onto the street were cracked, and Reader and Graham could both see a huge crack through the ceiling. Plaster filtered down through the newly made fissure.

“Hurry up!” Reader shouted.

The SWAT cops were already past, and Marrick and Graham were bringing up the rear.

“Anyone on the upper levels?” Reader asked.

The last of the SWAT cops, a lieutenant who believed in “first one in, last one out” leadership, paused. “I was going to send a team up the stairs, but when the explosion sounded, I told them to pull back. Did you see anything on that crazy camera of yours?”

“Just the snipers, and they were already gone,” Reader replied.

The SWAT commander nodded. “Get going. I want this place cleared—”

That’s when the roof came down in a choking cloud of dust. All Reader could hear was the cry of his best friend, Graham.

“Stretch!”

Pattaya, Thailand

AS SOON AS THE AIRCRAFT carrier’s helicopters loomed into radar range, Bolan and Grimaldi had taken off. They hovered in place long enough to watch the enemy submarine break apart. Bolan had made sure that it was only a diesel engine, and not a refurbished sub with nuclear power. His simple breaching charges were enough to turn the diesel engines into a bomb powerful enough to split the vehicle in two. Battered Korean survivors had been dumped into inflatable rafts and set adrift to explain what the hell they were doing in the area. Meanwhile, one less black market submarine patrolled the globe’s waters, snapped into two pieces and its ruined innards dumped to the bottom of the Gulf of Thailand.

At the airfield and Bolan’s temporary forward base in-country, he hooked up the severed IDE cables to a Stony Man laptop slot and had Aaron Kurtzman and the cybernetic team go over the hard drive via satellite uplink.

“Get some sleep,” Kurtzman told him. “It’ll take awhile to get what we need off the drive.”

“Will do,” Bolan answered. He made certain that their hangar was secured first, cleaned his pistols, slid the Desert Eagle under his pillow and went to sleep. Grimaldi had already sacked out after making sure that Dragon Slayer was in working order.

SEVEN HOURS LATER Grimaldi was up, having dry cereal and coffee as his morning meal, when Bolan joined him. “Mornin’, Sarge.”

“Any word from Aaron yet?” Bolan asked.

“Nope,” Grimaldi answered. “Want some grub?”

“I’ll make it myself once I change,” Bolan answered. The hangar hadn’t been equipped with a locker room that had a shower, so Bolan grabbed some clean clothes and a couple of towels and washed in the sink, scrubbing himself.

Bolan poured himself a bowl of dry cereal and helped himself to some coffee. Without a decent refrigerator, milk was out of the question. He supplemented his sparse grub with an apple.

It was boring, waiting, but the Executioner spent the time focusing on what he needed to do. He looked over maps to keep himself sharp on the area, and after refreshing his navigational knowledge, listened to radio reports to keep abreast of international news.

Three stories into the report, he listened to information about a Korean street gang who had robbed a federal bank in Salt Lake City. They’d escaped through the sewer system, and had set off an explosion that collapsed part of the building. Authorities were still trying to figure out the actual identities of the robbers, but promised swift arrests and resolutions.

The mention of the Korean street gang stuck in the Executioner’s mind. The prostituted young women were being shipped to North Korea in some form of trade. They were traveling concurrently with American and European style cattle, not common to Southeast Asia.

He’d heard plenty of rumors and stories over the years about UFOs and cattle mutilations around northern Utah, at a place called Dugway Proving Grounds. He remembered the actual facts about Dugway simply because several years ago there had been a leak of anthrax that had killed hundreds of heads of livestock in the area, and could have wiped out thousands of civilians if the winds had shifted during the containment breach.

Dugway was one of those places that remained on Bolan’s radar. He’d encountered dozens of efforts by foreign governments and terrorists to invade American bioweapons institutes across his long and bloody career. The Executioner had also encountered Chinese crime gangs abroad who did the dirty work of Communist Chinese intelligence services on more than enough occasions to never rule out the possibility that a group of common street punks could be working for a “higher” purpose.

North Korea was involved in smuggling humans and livestock, and there was talk of a mystery package from the captain of the freighter. And now, there’d been an incident involving a high-profile bank robbery and Korean street gangs in the backyard of one of the largest bioweapon containment breaches in recorded history.

It added up to a strange combination that orbited Bolan’s mind. When he got on the line with Kurtzman, he’d have to bring it up.

The laptop beeped. The monitor switched to a communication panel and Aaron Kurtzman’s voice came over the line. “Striker…”

“I’m on,” Bolan replied, activating the laptop’s built-in microphone. “What’s up?”

“You hear about the possible Korean street gang involvement in a Salt Lake City bank robbery?” Kurtzman asked.

“Yeah. That got your attention, too?” Bolan commented.

“It hit some of my buttons. I noticed something strange, too, in the livestock on its way to Korea,” Kurtzman answered.

“Rancher brands from near Salt Lake City?” Bolan asked.

Kurtzman didn’t sound surprised by Bolan’s wild guess. “You looked at them and recognized the brands?”

“Nope. Just a stab in the dark,” Bolan replied. “Any thoughts on if they could have been faked?” Bolan asked, getting back on topic.

“Brands aren’t national secrets, Striker,” Kurtzman responded. “Anyone with a good search engine would be able to pick up samples of all these brands. You’re thinking what?”

Bolan’s jaw tensed. “Dugway, livestock and anthrax all had one point in time where they were linked.”

“Yeah, that caught my attention, too,” Kurtzman answered. “We’re sitting on the information about the cattle brands and conducting covert inquiries about any cattle rustling.”

“Anything?” Bolan asked.

“Just that a rancher found another mutilated cow as of last week,” the Stony Man computer genius replied.

Bolan’s brow furrowed. “Any photographs?”

“I’ll transmit them to your laptop.”

“How good is the resolution?” Bolan asked.

Grimaldi winced and gave a yelp as he looked at a cow head, its lips seared away to expose bare teeth. “Good grief!”

“Good enough,” Kurtzman answered.

“Sorry,” Grimaldi replied.

Bolan looked at the carcass a little more closely. “Interesting.”

“What?” Kurtzman replied.

“The soft tissue was all excised—lips, organs, eyes…”

“Yeah. Same as always.”

“And bloodless. No mess on the ground,” Bolan added.

“Standard operating procedure with all these mutilations,” Kurtzman responded. “No clues left behind as to how these things were slaughtered on scene, and yet no blood was found.”

“And if you were a homicide detective, what would you conclude?” Bolan prodded.

“That the animal was slaughtered somewhere else and brought to the ‘crime scene,’” Kurtzman stated. “But these are animals that should have been missing in the morning.”

“Allegedly,” Bolan responded. “After all, cows are cows.”

“There are some distinguishing marks, and the brands…”

“Aaron, what was the age range among the livestock found on the freighter?” Bolan asked.